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Every evening at five o’clock, Christina and Rudy stopped work and began the ritual commonly known as Happy Hour. Rudy mixed Christina’s drink with loving precision, the cavalier slosh of Bombay Sapphire over ice shards, before settling across from her in his Stickley chair with his glass of Scotch. They shared a love of language and music (she is an author, he a composer, after all), a delight in intense conversation, a fascination with popes, and nearly thirty years of life together.

What did I think, that we had forever? muses Christina, seven months after Rudy’s unexpected death. While coming to terms with her loss, with the space that Rudy once inhabited, Christina reflects on their vibrant bond—with all its quirks, habits, and unguarded moments—as well as her passionate sorrow and her attempts to reposition herself and her new place in the very real world they shared.

In this literary jewel, a bittersweet novella of absence and presence and the mysterious gap between them, Gail Godwin has performed a small miracle. In essence, Evenings at Five is a grief sonata for solo instrument transposed into words. Interwoven with meditations and movements, full of aching truths and a wicked sense of humor, it exquisitely captures the cyclical nature of commitment—and the eternal quality of a romance completed.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Celebrated novelist Godwin (Father Melancholy's Daughter) lost her companion of nearly 30 years, the composer Robert Starer, two years ago, and this book is a devoted, quirky, wry and surprisingly powerful fictionalization of aspects of their life together as working artists. It takes its text, as Godwin might like to say (her last novel was, after all, Evensong) from the cocktail hour the pair observed, well, religiously, at the end of their working day, exchanging their jokes, their thoughts, their sense of themselves and their friends and neighbors. It swiftly and seamlessly moves into husband Rudy's long illness, nobly borne, and wife Christina's profound sense of loss after his death, tempered frequently by flashes of hilarity and sweet sense. The book has an elusive tone, somber but never mawkish, with a delight in words and the ways people use and abuse them that is typical of this urbane author. For a book that can be read in an hour, it is remarkably dense, and can only whet the appetite for the new novel Godwin is said to be working on. The drawings that accompany the text, as illustrations of some of Rudy and Christina's household artifacts, are clean-lined but repetitious.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Now that her composer husband is dead, Christina dreads "evenings at five"-the hour that the couple set aside for heart-to-hearts. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

It doesn't take readers of Evenings at Five too long before they realize that this book was written as an homage and in memory of the author's recently deceased partner. Gail Godwin in her secretly veiled memoir has crafted a fine novel about love, compassion, loss and the human spirit to move on.The title of the book Evenings at Five refers to that time of day when Christina, an author and Rudy a composer would meet for drinks. Cocktails for this twosome are a ritual each evening at five, they even have special names for the knives they use to cut the lemons and limes. This special hour at their home includes lively conversations about how that spent their days on their individual projects, their plans for trips and their futures together. They never anticipated Rudy's premature death and now Christina spends her evenings at five thinking about her time spent with Rudy and her future alone.While this book is poignant and very sad at times, the reader finishes the last pages content that Christina as well as Gail Godwin has had a fulfilling relationship and an amazing love. And because of this she will be able to move on, perhaps a bit sadder,but complete in the knowledge of what they have had. And as the author intended it is a fitting book to be written by an excellent author about the man she dearly loved who did die two years ago.I do recommend this book to those who love,to those who have loved and those who hope to love. As the saying goes,"'Tis better to have loved and lost, then never to have loved at all." Evening at Five certainly proves this adage to be true.

Because life is rarely without loss and grief, this slim novel may have wide appeal. However, this reader feels that the persons most attracted to and affected by "Evenings at Five" would have to be spouses for whom grief is still new, raw and ever present.It is amazing how so few words can so richly convey Christina's aching feelings. The simplicity of the book lies in the scarcity of words and the simple and stark pen drawings of the very articles that serve as constant reminders and reinforce the piercing emptiness and grief. A favorite tumbler; a metronome that is an integral tool to Rudy's composing skills; a richly-grained wooden chair with a beautiful, tapestried pillow; an answering machine with Rudy's voice that Christina cannot bring herself to erase.The chair keeps cropping up because Rudy, as his disease progressed, required sitting in an upright position and was probably all the more visible because of his forced confinement. Drawings, too, of the living room and descriptions of how they sat in proximity to one another, emphasize their closeness. They were woven together as a couple, as best friends, as collaborators in the co-creation of their home and individual work spaces...she an author...he a composer.Christina chronicles her pain without being mawkish. No matter where she turns, the memories are present and what makes the agony still worse is that on the night of Rudy's death, she had unsuspectingly left to return home and was reading as Rudy was dying. Sadly, she recalls that she will never be able to read that author again. No matter how many moments were spent together, from their grand passion when they first met, to the quieter times, the intimacy that grew over the years, there was never enough because it's now all gone...forever!Read more ›

A good little book that is well-written and beautifully crafted into a story with resonance for anyone who has lost a love to death. Provides a peak into a woman's day-to-day grief and into a life lived well together by two people. Sometimes sad, always poignant, Evenings At Five moves the reader to feel the void death leaves and to hear the voices that remain. It leaves you asking how much time is ever enough with your life's love.

What do Pope John Paul, a serrated knife fondly known as Ralph, and a bottle of gin have in common? Artfully, with humor and tenderness, Gail Godwin weaves the Pope, Ralph, and Bombay Sapphire gin into a loving testament.

Every evening at five, Rudy builds his wife a drink with loving precision. and announces that "the Pope has called." Rudy is a composer and hears music; Christina is a writer lost in a world of words. But somehow, despite their differences, for 28 years their marriage works. When Rudy dies, his formidable presence no longer holds center stage in Christina's life. The gifted linguist and world traveller with a mellifluous voice "one octave below God's" is gone. Stripped of his presence, Christina is reduced to drinking her gin alone and conversing with Rudy's chair every evening at five.

It's Christina's recollections of Rudy that makes Evenings at Five a standout. She reads his appointment diaries, kept through their years together, reliving the chronicle of his life. She listens to his music, composed one note on top of another until he reached a glorious symmetry - much like their life together. His is a powerful and lingering presence that defies death.

Christina's memories are a delightful read, despite the sobering subject. Ms. Godwin's skill as best selling wordsmith proves itself once again in this latest book. Evenings at Five transcends death and loss, guiding each reader to an individual finale.

More About the Author

Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of twelve critically acclaimed novels, including Unfinished Desires, A Mother and Two Daughters, Violet Clay, Father Melancholy's Daughter, Evensong, The Good Husband, and Evenings at Five. She is also the author of The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961--1963, the first of two volumes, edited by Rob Neufeld. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has written libretti for ten musical works with the composer Robert Starer. She lives in Woodstock, New York.